Since they were first held in 2010, the Rolling Stone Metal Awards have been as much about honoring the best metal talent in the country as about promoting some of the most promising Indian artists. In its sixth edition now, RSMA 2015 will launch Mumbai-based four-piece instrumental-metal act The Minerva Conduct on their home turf next month. Says guitarist Prateek Rajagopal, who also plays with death grind band Gutslit, “We couldn’t have asked for a better platform for a debut gig in our home town.”

Formed in 2014, The Minerva Conduct recently played their first-ever show in Pune along with Pune metal groups Dark Helm and Knights & Circles. Rajagopal also mentions that The Minerva Conduct was a studio project for the longest time and have started performing on stage only this year. The band will play most of their new material at RSMA 2015. Rajagopal adds “We’ll be playing a few tracks from our album. It is a blend of heavy metal and death metal along with some psychedelic and post rock. We also released our debut track called “Unearth” a couple of months ago. We’ll be playing that too.”

The band also consists of guitarist Nishith Hegde from heavy-metal band Albatross, bassist Ashwin Shriyan from extreme metal band Demonic Resurrection and 17-year-old drummer, Ranbir Kapoor. Virendra Kaith, drummer of metals acts like Demonic Resurrection and Scribe, fills in for Kapoor from time to time and will be playing with the band for RSMA 2015.

The Minerva Conduct will perform at Casio presents Rolling Stone Metal Awards on March 22nd, 2015 at Blue Frog, Mumbai. Delhi progressive metal band Colossal Figures will also perform at the event. For the full lineup and more event detail, see here.